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No, you need to open a command prompt with administrator privilages and type in at the prompt.

Ah, there we go...well, it says "Windows Resource Protection did not find any integrity violations."

Bummer, was worth a shot, sometimes it works.

Does this mean it would be pointless for me to try reformatting and reinstalling everything again?

It's really hard to say. There's something wrong somewhere, and it seems you've replaced most of the relevant parts to no avail. If you still have the old SSD, you could try doing a clean install on it and see if it helps? Since it seems the drive was not the issue?

Well, the problems I've been having didn't start until after I installed the old SSD. And I did have a number of problems with it from the initial installation going forward, including the motherboard randomly -- and not infrequently -- failing to detect it at times. So I still think it was a bad drive, in any case.

It's possible. It's really hard to diagnose systems remotely as well. I guess as long as a re-install doesn't bother you too much, its worth a shot.

It's a pain in the ass, but I don't know what else to try at this point.

I'm not sure either. :/

I keep forgetting to mention this, but I have an update on the problem I've been experiencing starting from this post and going forward.

After ordering a new SSD and reformatting, I was at a loss when the problem still persisted. But recently I've stopped using EVGA's PrecisionX utility, which is software that came with my video card, and...ever since I stopped using it, no more display problems.

Well, apparently hardware's changed a fair bit since I stopped doing it several years ago...so I think I could use some expertise.



BACKGROUND
Long story short, my video card started crashing from what I believed to be overheating on the 4th of July (cutting short playing Stardew Valley with my little sister...very annoying). After cleaning out the case fans and video card fan with compressed air, the problem was gone...until two weeks ago today, when my system hard-crashed.

POST informs me the card is now experiencing VRAM errors...It kind of still works; I have interesting artifacts on the green channel, but my machine is usable with default Windows display settings...well, for programs that don't want OpenGL or anything of the sort (and there are some odds things that expect it).

Not expecting it to remain working like this indefinitely, I ordered another video card. To my admittedly-outdated hardware knowledge and several searches, this new card should be compatible...but the system refuses to come up with the new card in place.

HARDWARE

• My system is an Alienware Aurora R4 (manual here). Other than the hard drives (whose replacements are working fine) and the video card, everything is as it came from Dell when I ordered it six and a half years ago.
• Original video card: GeForce GTX 555
• New video card: GeForce GTX 1050

SYMPTOMS
On attempting to boot with the card in place, I get the normal single beep of starting to boot; followed by a beep code of five beeps. I've seen that this is sort of a "generic" beep code that can mean a lot of things; but since replacing the original video card results in a successful boot, I'm fairly sure it's the new video card rather than something like the CMOS battery. I will also note that the same beep code occurred in July, when trying to restart the system shortly after crashing rather than waiting a several minutes (that the delay had an effect is why I suspected overheating, in fact).

I discovered the hard way that there's more than one "flavor" of DVI...and the DVI-to-VGA converter to connect my monitor doesn't fit (DVI-D doesn't have the analog pins that converting to VGA requires, it seems). So I have no idea if any error message is being displayed.

The only other information I've been able to gather is that, for the first boot after switching from the new card to the original, the boot process displays a warning that "the previous overclocking failed". I didn't have any more time to devote to troubleshooting at that point, though.

PLANNING
So before I just return the card, leaving me where I was before (except with a few weeks less life on the original card); I'm going to run a troubleshooting operation tomorrow when I have the time to spare (and can pull an HDMI-capable TV from elsewhere to hook up to the new card). I have a few things I've thought to try, but if I was knowledgable on the subject I'd either have this working already or known to order a monitor at the same time as the card (A new monitor is on the way, now....)

• Hooking up a display: Yes, I find it unlikely this will do it by itself; but on the other hand I can't rule it out and I'll need to do this anyway.
• Disable all overclocking options in the BIOS: None of the descriptions of the options sound video-card-y, so I'll start by disabling them all; if it works then, I'll renable them one at a time until I find my problem. I can't be completely sure the message from before is related, but that's what troubleshooting is for.
• Move the card to the other PCI-Express x16 connector: I don't particularly want to try this, since that'd necessitate moving the sound card too and I want to minimize changes for the old card in case I can't get this card working...but it'd be just plain silly not to try it if nothing else has worked.

I came across someone saying that disabling UEFI boot might help, but I don't think that's likely...partly because they were saying it had something to do with "ready for Windows 8" machines, and Windows 8 wouldn't be released to manufacturers for five months after I order the machine originally; partly because I already tried it and it made no difference. (Plus, I can't boot from my hard drive when the setting is changed from UEFI to Legacy; and trying to mess with the OS seems like overkill)



...so, that's my scenario. Am I missing anything obvious?